by Kathelene McCarty Smith
SCUA recently purchased an interesting scrapbook that will enhance our instructional efforts related to sensationalized media coverage in Victorian London. The scrapbook was assembled by an unidentified man who gave the album to American actor Thomas Dartmouth Rice. It contains approximately 100 pages of newspaper articles, pamphlets, and clippings, many with illustrations and some annotated. They attest to the public’s fascination with horrific crimes, specifically one that took place near the North London suburb of Edgware in the dead of winter, 1836.
A current visitor to Edgware would be met with bustling shops, parks, and restaurants, with nary a hint of its gruesome past. Before “Jack the Ripper,” “The Bermondsey Horror,” and the “The Thames Torso Killer,” there was the “The Edgware Road Murderer.”
Although statistically, Victorian London did not see a substantial rise in murders from previous decades, it did see an increase in newspapers attempting to grow their readership by churning out stories of adultery, petty crimes, and lurid murders. Thus, when the body of a woman was found mutilated on Edgware Road a few days after Christmas Day, 1836, it heralded the beginning of the Edgware Murderer saga.
On December 26, workmen cleaning a building site came upon a package wrapped in a ragged dress. Upon further inspection, they discovered that it was the torso of a woman, her head, arms, and legs having been sawed off. Less than a week after the unidentified remains received a proper burial, a badly decomposed head was discovered adrift in the canal near the Ben Jonson Lock. The woman’s head was displayed at a local poorhouse, in hopes that it would be identified. Soon after, disembodied legs appeared, wrapped separately in a sack and submerged in a nearby drainage ditch. After an official exhumation of the torso, the head and appendages were acknowledged as belonging to the same woman. Fortunately, an identification of the victim was soon to come.
Figure 1: Illustrated Accounts of the Murder
In late March 1837, a local middle-aged broker named William Gay began to suspect that the murdered woman might be his sister, Hannah Gay Brown, a widow who had been missing since Christmas Eve. After examining what remained of the woman’s head, he assured the authorities that it was, in fact, his sister. Suspicion immediately fell to her fiancé, James Greenacre, the last person to see her alive. Police soon took him into custody, along with a significantly younger woman named Sarah Gale, a former actress who was purported to be his live-in mistress. Also in residence was Gale’s four-year-old son George. At the time of their apprehension, the three were packing to sail for America.
Figure 2: Line Drawing of James Greenacre and Sarah Gale
In the days leading up to the trial, newspapers and tabloids featured speculative articles about the guilt of the couple. Media coverage became even more lurid during the court proceedings. The story was easy to sensationalize – a respectable widow woman, tricked into a false engagement, jilted on Christmas Eve, murdered, chopped into pieces, and thrown in the water to decompose. The story was an editor’s dream.
The trial began on April 10, 1837, and excited crowds swarmed the Central Criminal Court with hopes of catching a glimpse of the defendants. Sketches of Greenacre and Gale were sold on the streets to commemorate the event and there were detailed news stories about each of the many witnesses and their testimonies. Two entrepreneurial souls even sold entry passes to see the interior of Greenacre’s “murder” house.
Figure 3: The Trial Was Highly Publicized
An array of witnesses took the stand, each giving testimony regarding their knowledge of the murder and/or the defendants. Finally, Mr. Greenacre had his day in court. He testified that he had indeed seen his fiancé, Hannah Gay Brown, on Christmas Eve and called off their wedding scheduled for Christmas Day. He claimed that this drastic action was taken after discovering some unsavory characteristics possessed by Miss Brown and his belief that she was marrying him because of his perceived wealth. An argument ensued, each of them thinking that the other had more money than they actually had. Greenacre explained that one thing led to another, and Miss Brown fell back, causing a fatal blow to her head. He claimed that although it was an accident, he panicked and decided to dispose of the body in the gruesome manner in which it had been found.
It was then up to the jury to decide whether Brown’s death was accidental, premeditated, or malicious. Although he attempted to exonerate his mistress, Sarah Gale, she was considered an accessory to the crime. Her fate would be wholly dependent upon what was decided about Greenacre’s culpability.
Figure 4: News Accounts Kept the Public Informed
After only fifteen minutes of deliberation, the court recorder announced that the jury had found them both guilty of murder. Although Gale was recognized as only an accessory to the crime, the fact that she was found in possession of some of Hannah Brown’s jewelry swayed the jury to believe that she benefited from the murder and was also guilty. On April 12, after what was considered a “protracted” two-day trial, the couple were united for the last time, as they stood before the judge to be sentenced. Both were condemned to hang.
After the sentence was read, Greenacre drafted another statement blaming the whole incident on too much liquor. He also gave a more detailed, and perhaps truthful account, of Hannah Brown’s death, subsequent dismemberment, and disposal – including an account of riding on an omnibus with the bundled limbs in his lap.
May 2, 1837, was the date set for Greenacre’s execution. He had attempted to hang himself with a handkerchief in his prison cell but had been thwarted. While he partook of his last meal, bread with some butter and a cup of tea, a mob of over 25,000 people “of the lowest order,” assembled to view the coming spectacle. As the rope dropped, and Greenacre fell through the scaffold’s floor, the crowd cheered – signifying their belief that justice had prevailed. Eventually, the body was taken down and given to two phrenologists who shaved his head and made a plaster cast for later study.
Figure 5: The Plaster Cast of Greenacre’s Head
Although Sarah Gale was initially condemned to hang, her sentence was commuted and she and her young son were transported to a penal colony in New South Wales, Australia. She continued to declare her innocence of the murder of Hannah Brown. Further research reveals that she married while in exile, assisting her husband in his shop. She died in Australia in 1888.
